i gave you my love to borrow
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: "She would have ruined you, Nik," Kol whispers, head lolling gently to sleep. "She already has." klaroline


Super out of context. Sorry I'm not sorry. Klaroline for the win.

x

Fallen kingdoms are messy affairs to clean. He always had some sort of servant around to mop up his catastrophes. But this one was too big to even fathom, even for a superior being with the knowledge of a millennia in his hands.

The doppleganger, the beautiful, greatly adored, way too puckish (if you ask him, not that anyone ever does) sacrifices herself for the good of mankind and the brothers grim collapses under the sheer rockability of her death. The one that loved too much burns everything and shatters glass and splatters crimson all over the city in a fortnight. The one that didn't love at all sits solemn, scratching a pen over yellowed pages of parchment, emotions a tight twisted bomb in his bottle green eyes. It's even worse when she wakes craving the poisoned nectar that she staved off from for too long.

Poor, silly stupid girl. You were never meant for a happy ending.

x

The sleepy town of Mystic Falls is stale, defecated, denounced with his absence. Salvatores running the show, all bravado and bad decisions, the rest of their 'family', he snorts, following in kind. Unfortunately that means him in this borrowed shell of a hybrid prick, grunting unintelligibly at their every word, pounding cheap lager, and listening very nicely to dear sweet mum, whose neck he wants to slice right open.

His days pass at the boarding house, mulling over a Klaus free existence (if they only knew, idiots), and what steps to take so precious, wonderful Elena can control her vampire self. It's a touch ironic that his input is seriously considered but by one party and one alone. His mask of the dutiful boyfriend is not difficult to perfect since he finally has _her_. With the Mediterranean eyes and tousled locks of golden wheat cascading down her silken shoulders, tulip pink lips twittering on and on, rolling those mesmerizing orbs about how this really isn't so bad once you are all about the blood bags and eat as many fries as you want at the grille. Because Jesus, Elena, I'm pretty good at it, so it can't be that hard.

His face tries to keep the laughter in at his rented girlfriend with her legs locked into the Persian rug, arms akimbo on her waist, sighs in her mouth, floating about and pissing the royal hell out of the dynamic brother duo. With a shaking hand on her hip bone (he still has yet to register that he can touch her whenever he wants), he nods in gruff defeat because he is learning quite quickly that Caroline Forbes is always right, and you're damned if you think you're going to outsmart her. In anything. Admirable really.

x

He buys her sunflowers every Tuesday afternoon for the month of August and leaves them on her doorstep with a note signed with love. Then he watches from across the street as she smiles upon finding her treat. She really is just seventeen.

x

She fights with Bonnie the first week of September about what he has no clue, but soon they're at the grille compelling any and every bartender to hand over tequila shots and whiskey sours. Her stance is less heightened when drunk, all lazy curls and sparkled eyes and smudged lipstick on her ruby red cheeks. With her head on his shoulders, his hands gripping her waist she sings soft little pipes in his ears about how she was always a second choice and never a first, found her footing with blood on her teeth, and hot flesh in her fingers, still isn't sure that she will ever be loved as much as she wants to be.

Twirling her hair in betwixt his fingers, he isn't quite sure how to do this, to be what she needs, and when she pulls back and looks at him for some kind of confirmation, all he can do is stare at her and her watery ocean tinted orbs and wrecked lips and silk skin and says the first thing that he can think of that will most likely never be enough. "This universe will not regret you, Caroline."

She fades back into his shoulders, whispering on his collarbone thank yous, and for the first time in a thousand years, he feels like he's done something right.

x

They spend one afternoon in the library much to his confusion with his head in her lap, tracing lines up her skirt until she slaps them away and they laugh a touch too loudly for the likes of the lady in tweed and wool. She is reading Fitzgerald in a quiet tone, lightly going over the phrases, skipping a few pages until she is satisfied with where she ends. He beats her to the punch. "I love her and that's the beginning and the end of everything." Their eyes meet, and he wonders if it's possible for the angel to fall in love with the demon.

x

One afternoon he spends with Matt, sitting at the bar drinking glass after glass of bourbon. "It wasn't your fault," he says quietly, dancing his hands on the wood, swiveling the tumbler around.

The human peers up, hands halfway inside his apron pockets, shy grin on his face. "Thanks, man." His gratitude comes out in such force, shattering the silence that once stung the shallow air. Walking to check on his other customers, Matt shuffles away, head downward, fighting the resistance from the Salvatores glares in the back corner. Klaus reaches in his pockets and leaves a hundred dollar bill on the bar.

x

Witch bitch stalks into second period history class with a shit eating look etched into her cheekbones, wicked eyes tweaking like a mad woman and landing directly on him. A piece of paper flies overhead the rest of the humans, dropping with a soft flutter on his desk. _It's over. I've found your body. The storage unit on I-95 at seven sharp._

He glances up, her eyes locked on him, gives a stiff little nod of the head and then wrenches right back to the front of the classroom. Klaus writes notes absentmindedly about the Civil War and tries to remember how to swallow.

x

The room stinks of incense and witchy wonderings and his body, really not his, is starting to quiver and shake and rattle, rolling his life back into a slow gait with long legs and a perpetual five o'clock shadow, greyed eyes ghosted over with centuries past, bee stung lips pinched with venom, and the air he's been holding in for the last couple of months escapes. And so does he in a quiet hush, leaving nothing but a naïve spirit of nature and a bruised and battered teenage boy behind in his wake.

x

For the month of October, he sends sunflowers every Tuesday. He leaves them with a note that says nothing, just a blank spat of canvas waiting to be violated. He never gets to see her face.

x

It's snowing in Rome in December. His hair is a right mess from his hat that he rips off his head, unbuttoning his leather jacket, slowly deliberately into his Holy City loft, decorated with Rebekah's ridiculous Christmas decorations. It smells of the faintest gingerbread and silky red port wine, and his mind is thousands of miles away from small town Virginia until he walks smack into Stefan Salvatore stringing paper chains and dotting sugar cookie Christmas trees with evergreen icicles at his kitchen table.

The boy is laughing and laughing and his sister is giggling with pink cheeks, just a tickle of snow white skintight sweater riding up, exposing a glimpse of midriff. "What the fuck is going on?" he bellows, slamming the crystal china on the bone colored floor, sending reindeer and elves flying. His left hand finds the bottle of port, opening the bottle with his teeth, he spits the thing to the floor, eyeing the scene around him with a slightly less than careful expression. Rebekah has not flinched and neither has the youngest Salvatore.

Stefan stands, hands in his pockets, looks Klaus directly in the eyes. "She figured it out." His heart, if he had one, stammers once in his chest.

x

On the last day of the year, he takes three planes, two cars, and one fifteen minute walk to see her kiss Tyler in the middle of the town square at midnight. He still leaves a dozen sunflowers on her doorstep with a note, two words written in inky black. _Love, Klaus._

His plane to Tokyo leaves in two hours.

x

Valentine's Day is spent in pub after pub after dive bar in downtown Sydney ignoring all the girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. The next day, him and Kol lay fully clothed on the grainy sand beach with their eyes closed in a hangover induced coma bemoaning loves past and present (like that 'hot little number with the bendy legs from the surf shop over there', Kol smirks). Little waves slide up the shoreline, crashing upon the pebbles, shattering shells and bringing in the smoothest bits of sea glass.

"She would have ruined you, Nik," his baby brother says out the corner of his mouth, deep ochre eyes shut, sleep threatening to overtake.

Klaus turns his head to face the dimwit and tells him, "She already has."

x

Four weeks later, he's with Elijah in Scotland in some dusty old library begging his older brother to let him go out. Elijah's been cutting the cord short since he arrived a few days earlier, and with a great deal of wheedling and pleading and promising (_Jesus, I swear I will not, fucking slit anyone's throat, you happy_), the older sibling sighs and drives them to a wine room in downtown Edinburgh. It's stuffy and hot and filled to the brim with people in suits, so when Elijah isn't paying attention to him, but rather to the bevvy of buxom brunettes on the velvet plush sofa, he ducks out the locale right next door.

Compelling the bar wench into a gratis aged scotch, he surveys the room, gorgeous Scottish girls with wavy auburn hair and leaf green eyes, douche boyfriends with complexes, skinny hipsters with bony hips, and one girl with golden curls and breathtaking ocean eyes, a raw tulip pout. Time, he promises up and down to his older brother about twenty minutes later, stops and she lightning quick runs out, leaving a faint hint of lilacs and honey behind her.

Pressing a ringed finger to his temple, Elijah sighs tiredly and tells him. "They're here on spring break, Nik. They didn't want to see you." Nodding his head like a petulant child, he knows what this really means. _She _didn't want to see you.

x

Stefan sends him a letter through Rebekah in late April with a word and a question mark. He sets the damn thing on fire and drinks an entire bottle of Dom in one sitting.

_Prom?_

x

On May first, he sends her a single sunflower with a note attached to it. _Save me a dance._ He doesn't get to see that she actually smiles.

x

If he's learned anything at all from Mystic Falls' dances, it's to come prepared with a crossbow and a pint of doppleganger blood, god forbid, anything should go wrong. The Virginia spring is warm and caressing a hand over his bare neck as he saunters up the red carpet walkway and flirts his way in the front door. It's a masquerade, and tying his devil red leather on his cheekbones, he secures the black ribbon and admires the scenery. Young girls whirling dervish in sloppy circles with handsome boys following their each moving, grasping the last flits of their princess gowns. He spies the doppleganger with the brother that loved too much and the brother that didn't love enough. The human stands to the side watching witch bitch and young Jeremy melt into the other. And her, she is in the center ring, rich cranberry colored silk flying out in uneven patterns all around her, head thrown back in joy, lyrics sliding out of the crimson pout. He slinks closer and closer, always admiring, always aware of her presence.

With a feather light tap on her shoulder, she spins around, entirely unsurprised to see him. In Mystic Falls, at prom. Rather she extends a hand, and he takes hers, gently guiding her around the ballroom. It lasts no longer than five minutes, her eyes staring up at him from under long lashes, her hands hotly holding his shoulder blades, his lips raw and wanting for hers. With a swift bow, he places his lips on her hand, greyed green orbs faced upward and smirks. She grins. It was worth it.

x

Six years later, he's strolling on a hot June day through the Tuilleries, sketchbook under his right arm, charcoals stuck in his back right pocket. Crossing the Seine to arrive just outside the Latin Quarter at Notre Dame, he perches on the brick wall and gazes up, completely engulfed in the architecture. He's laid eyes on it more times than he cares to count and every time, it makes his breathing shallower.

Hours pass and daylight fades, leaving a sunset starburst of magenta, opal, and tangerine on the horizon. Slipping in between taxis and vespas (_perdon, amore_), he settles into an outdoor café and relaxes into his drawing, taking the occasional nip of coffee or chocolate pastry, alternating with glass after glass of decadent Merlot.

Craning his neck further forward, a shadow appears in watery yellow bathed in the Paris moonlight, tipped in silver and steeped in lilacs and honey. Daring to glance up, she laughs. "What took you so long?"

x

Every year for her birthday since she was seventeen, she has received sunflowers with a note reading nothing. Every year, every day, every minute of every hour since she was last in Paris, she has pulled up the hem of her virgin lace gown and followed the devil straight to hell.


End file.
